Grace v. Hooper ( 2023 )

Case: 21-30753 Document: 00516704267 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/06/2023
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
____________ FILED
April 6, 2023
No. 21-30753
Lyle W. Cayce
____________
Clerk
Jessie J. Grace, III,
Petitioner—Appellee,
versus
Tim Hooper, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Respondent—Appellant.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
USDC No. 2:02-CV-3818
______________________________
Before Wiener, Higginson, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.
Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge: *
In 1994, Jessie Grace was convicted of second-degree murder in
Louisiana and sentenced to life in prison. In 2015, he brought a third habeas
petition in state court, alleging Brady violations based on newly available
grand-jury testimony. The State conceded that favorable evidence had been
withheld but argued the evidence was not material. The Louisiana district
court granted relief; the Louisiana court of appeals reversed, holding that the
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*
This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 21-30753 Document: 00516704267 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/06/2023
No. 21-30753
district court abused its discretion; and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied
certiorari, stating, “Denied. Relator fails to show that the state withheld
material exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland.”
Grace then brought a petition in federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
The district court granted relief under § 2254(d)(1), finding that the withheld
evidence was material under Brady and that under clearly established
Supreme Court precedent, no reasonable jurist could have concluded
otherwise.
The State timely appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 22(b)(3). See Smith v. Davis, 927
F.3d 313, 320 (5th Cir. 2019). The State argues that the district court
misunderstood and misapplied § 2254(d)(1), that reasonable jurists could
have come to the same conclusion as the Louisiana higher courts, and that
there was no Brady violation at all. Because the district court’s opinion did
not sufficiently analyze the objective reasonableness of the Louisiana higher
courts’ decisions, we VACATE and REMAND for the district court to
provide an analysis consistent with the requirements of § 2254(d)(1).
I.
We do not repeat the underlying facts of this case, which have been
exhaustively described elsewhere. See State v. Grace, 94-KA-295 (La. App. 5
Cir. 9/27/94); 643 So. 2d 1306; State v. Grace, 17-451 (La. App. 5 Cir.
11/14/17).
“In a habeas corpus appeal, we review the district court’s findings of
fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo, applying the same
standards to the state court’s decision as did the district court.” Reeder v.
Vannoy, 978 F.3d 272, 276 (5th Cir. 2020) (per curiam) (quoting Jenkins v.
Hall, 910 F.3d 828, 832 (5th Cir. 2018)).
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The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)
“imposes important limitations on the power of federal courts to overturn
the judgments of state courts in criminal cases.” Shoop v. Hill, 139 S. Ct. 504,
506 (2019) (per curiam). Under 18 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), “habeas relief may
be granted only if the state court’s adjudication ‘resulted in a decision that
was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of,’ Supreme Court
precedent that was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the adjudication.” Id.(quoting White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 419–20 (2014)). “This means that a
state court’s ruling must be ‘so lacking in justification that there was an error
well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for
fairminded disagreement.’” Id. (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86,
103 (2011)). Put otherwise, “[a] state court’s determination that a claim lacks
merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could
disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Woods v. Etherton,
578 U.S. 113, 116–17 (2016) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted).
The determination at issue in this case is the Louisiana higher courts’
holding that the State did not violate its Brady obligation to disclose material
exculpatory evidence to the defense. Under Brady v. Maryland, “the
suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon
request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or
to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”
373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). The rule in Brady applies to evidence undermining
witness credibility. Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 153–54 (1972). Here,
the State concedes all elements of a Brady violation except materiality.
“Evidence qualifies as material when there is any reasonable
likelihood it could have affected the judgment of the jury.” Wearry v. Cain,
577 U.S. 385, 392 (2016) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted). The defendant “need not show that he ‘more likely than not’
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would have been acquitted had the new evidence been admitted.” Id. The
defendant “must show only that the new evidence is sufficient to undermine
confidence in the verdict.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted). In other words, the question is whether “the withheld evidence in
the context of the entire record” is such that, “had the evidence been
disclosed, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Turner v.
United States, 137 S. Ct. 1885, 1893 (2017) (internal quotation marks and
citations omitted).
II.
The Supreme Court has provided directions to federal courts in the
§ 2254(d)(1) context, but the district court’s opinion in this case did not
wholly follow them. First, in Shinn v. Kayer, the Court considered a Ninth
Circuit opinion granting relief under § 2254(d)(1) and stated that it was
“fundamentally inconsistent” with AEDPA:
The panel essentially evaluated the merits de novo, only tacking
on a perfunctory statement at the end of its analysis asserting
that the state court’s decision was unreasonable. In other
words, it appears to have treated the unreasonableness
question as a test of its confidence in the result it would reach
under de novo review.
141 S. Ct. 517, 523 (2020) (per curiam) (cleaned up).
The district court’s opinion in this case is susceptible to a similar
concern. The opinion contains less than six pages of analysis, only some of
which discusses Brady materiality, and only one paragraph of which
concludes that the state courts’ conclusions were objectively unreasonable.
The opinion appears to provide a de novo analysis followed by a brief
statement that the state courts were objectively unreasonable to come to a
different conclusion. We disagree with Grace’s suggestion that the facts of
this case are so extreme that this depth of analysis is sufficient.
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Second, when we evaluate a state court’s decision under § 2254(d)(1),
“we may not use this circuit’s precedent to ‘refine or sharpen a general
principle of Supreme Court jurisprudence into a specific legal rule that [the
Supreme] Court has not announced.’” Reeder, 978 F.3d at 276 (alteration in
original) (quoting Marshall v. Rodgers, 569 U.S. 58, 64 (2013) (per curiam)).
In fact, the Supreme Court has stated that a federal habeas court “may not
‘consul[t] its own precedents, rather than those of [the Supreme] Court,’”
when making such evaluations. White, 572 U.S. at 420 n.2 (first alteration in
original) (quoting Parker v. Matthews, 567 U.S. 37, 48 (2012) (per curiam)). 1
The district court opinion’s analysis of Brady materiality relies heavily
on Fifth Circuit precedent and minimally on Supreme Court precedent. We
note, in particular, the absence of discussion and application of Wearry, 577
U.S. 385, Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73 (2012), and Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S.
419 (1995). Grace argues that the district court’s citations to Fifth Circuit
precedent could be replaced with citations to equally specific Supreme Court
precedent, especially Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974). Whether that is
so is a matter we leave to the district court to elaborate and explain on
remand.
Third, “[d]eciding whether a state court’s decision involved an
unreasonable application of federal law or was based on an unreasonable
determination of fact requires the federal habeas court to train its attention
on the particular reasons—both legal and factual—why state courts rejected
a state prisoner’s federal claims.” Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S. Ct. 1188, 1191–92
(2018) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “[W]hen the last
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1
This is, of course, compatible with the fact “we may ‘look to circuit precedent to
ascertain whether [we have] already held that the particular point in issue is clearly
established by Supreme Court precedent.’” Reeder, 978 F.3d at 276–77 (alteration in
original) (quoting Marshall, 569 U.S. at 64).
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state court to decide a prisoner’s federal claim explains its decision on the
merits in a reasoned opinion . . . , a federal habeas court simply reviews the
specific reasons given by the state court and defers to those reasons if they
are reasonable.” Id. at 1192. But the issue “is more difficult . . . when the
relevant state-court decision on the merits, say, a state supreme court
decision, does not come accompanied with those reasons.” Id.
It has been a point of dispute in this case whether Wilson requires the
court to “look through” the minimally reasoned opinion of the Louisiana
Supreme Court and to focus on the reasoning of the Louisiana court of
appeals. The alternative to Wilson would require the district court to consider
hypothetical lines of reasoning that would support the Louisiana Supreme
Court’s opinion. See Richter, 562 U.S. at 103. These hypothetical lines would
presumably include the reasoning of the Louisiana court of appeals.
Regardless of whether Wilson’s “look through” method applies, the
district court opinion did not sufficiently train its attention on state court
reasoning—actual or hypothetical—and analyze it with the deference that
§ 2254(d)(1) requires. Because we are a court of review, and because we
recognize the district court’s depth of knowledge about this long-running
case, we return this case to the district court to produce an analysis that
conforms to Supreme Court direction and the requirements of § 2254(d)(1).
We give no view as to the conclusion the district court should reach on
remand.
III.
We VACATE the portion of the district court’s December 2, 2021,
opinion granting relief under § 2254(d)(1) and the final judgment and
REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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